


Stone and Flesh

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, Canonical Character Death, Domesticity in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Dreams vs. Reality, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Morning Cuddles, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:40:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean didn’t think, even in his filthiest imaginings, that Cas would sound like this in bed—loud, eager, easy with it. He doesn’t give a fuck who hears him enjoying himself. Though maybe Dean should have known. It’s not like Cas has ever once held back on anything he ever wanted to say or do—Didn’t he?(Not quite an episode coda for S15e18 per se, but more a "what comes after.")
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 47
Kudos: 424
Collections: SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection





	Stone and Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> So... I had all these little stories planned. Then I caught up with Supernatural. And... I have no stories left. -tears- This isn't betaed, though perhaps it should have been.

Dean wakes up to find Cas looking at him.

He’s awake, but blinking, sleepy, like Dean turning over and grunting into his pillow, the way a guy just does when he’s got memory foam under him and no apocalypse in front of his face, was what woke him up.

It probably _was_ what woke him up, considering he’s lying on his side in Dean’s bed, and his face is about six inches away from Dean’s. His scruff is thin and elegant in the dim half-light of Dean’s nightlight (shut the fuck up, of course Dean has a nightlight; he can’t see in the dark, they keep weapons in their rooms, and the Bunker rooms don’t have any windows). Cas’s bottom lip is poking out just a little, like he hasn’t had the time or doesn’t give enough of a damn to arrange his expression.

He doesn’t have to sleep much, but with his grace fading in dribs and drabs now that God’s gone, he has to sleep a little. Just in, like, little hibernation chunks, every few days.

“Like how a boa constrictor eats!” is what Jack has to say about it—cheerful as ever.

“Well, that’s unflattering,” Sam mutters.

Dean agrees with that, because _ew._ But with the way the two celestials in their weird little family are nodding in combined agreement, arguing with them means he’s probably going to get a lecture about how beautiful and fascinating snakes are. And Dean does _not_ want a lecture about snakes.

Actually waking up from his little naps, though, always seems like a chore for Cas. He probably doesn’t mean to look like he’s pouting about it.

It’s fucking adorable.

Since Dean doesn’t want to move—and it’s _his_ goddamned bed—and Cas couldn’t take a hint if it hit him with a crowbar, they stare at each other in silence for what even _Dean,_ sleep-addled as he is, can recognize is far too long.

“Whatever happened to you having your own room, huh?” Dean finally grumbles.

“Your bed is more comfortable,” Cas answers, very seriously, and he tucks the topsheet a little closer around where it’s draped on his hips. He’s not wearing a shirt. He’s so close his breath is a motion against Dean’s lips. His eyes start to drape closed again.

Dean can’t exactly _deny_ that—though he also can’t say that Cas has ever _complained_ about the mattress in his room before—and he’s not sure that he wants to have a discussion about bed-sharing or whatever this early in the morning.

“Cas,” he sighs, after a moment. “Seriously, buddy, what’ve we said about—”

Cas’s eyes crack back open. The timbre of his voice is so low that Dean almost feels it like old velvet on his skin, and goosebumps rise on the back of his arms. He says, “If you say ‘personal space,’ Dean, I’m going to do such unspeakable things to you.”

Dean grins, and closes the distance with a tilt of his head. Their noses touch at the very tips. Cas’s eyes narrow.

“Unspeakable, huh?” Dean murmurs back. “ _Damn_. You promise?”

This time, it’s not just a narrowing, it’s definitely a squint. “Threats were much more effective when you didn’t enjoy them,” Cas rumbles. That rasp of his is deeper than normal, darker. He’s probably _trying_ to actually be threatening.

Maybe.

Once upon a time—a very long time ago—that might have worked.

Maybe.

But that little thread of warm exasperation that runs underneath it is too damned familiar, now.

Dean laughs, and backs his head off just enough that he’s not threatening to go cross-eyed from figuring out what part of Cas’s face to focus on. It leaves the tip of his nose warm, his cheeks warmer. “Whatever you say, buddy. C’mon, were threats _ever_ effective on me?”

Cas considers that for long enough that Dean might’ve been insulted.

Then Cas says, licking over the thought, “I could withhold sexual favors,” and Dean _is_ insulted.

“Oh, _favors_ , are they, now?” he answers, smirking. “I dunno, Cas, pretty sure the only ‘unspeakable’ thing likely to be going on there is you trying out dirty talk aga—"

Dean’s not _surprised_ to end up on his back with six feet of annoyed mostly-still-an-angel lying on top of him and the covers now completely tangled around both their legs. A knee with just a little scattered hair on it scrapes against the inside of Dean’s thigh; the twisted edge of the blanket bites into his hip, dragging them together where the edge is still pinned under Dean’s ass. A groin wedges into his in a way that’s not _exactly_ comfortable, but isn’t exactly _un_ comfortable either.

Cas doesn’t have a stitch on under the covers. Well, of course he doesn’t; he doesn’t bother to put clothes on after they have sex—and he still questions why Dean does, as if _he’s_ suddenly the damned authority on wearing clothes or not wearing clothes. But yeah, Dean still puts on his boxers after they’re done: a lifetime’s habits die hard, and he still doesn’t like to sleep naked.

“You’re _incorrigible_ ,” Cas growls. He’s trying to scowl. It’s just not sticking. There’s a pillow crease on his cheek and the corners of his mouth are flickering like he’s fighting not to let them pull up.

Dean pokes the tip of his tongue out and licks his own upper lip. Cas’s eyes trace the motion. “That mean ‘really fucking cute?’”

Cas sighs. “Yes, it really does,” and his mouth lowers onto Dean’s.

They kiss long and slow, familiar sweet tongue and just a little morning breath. Dean settles a hand on Cas’s waist, then a little lower, petting the high, firm curve of his ass, a thigh through the thin blanket that Dean hopes still has his bite marks on it. Cas’s hand curves over his shoulder and against the back of his neck, his small noises of enjoyment burring against Dean’s lips, and there’s the dull bite of short nails when Dean’s fingers sneak under the edge of the blanket and tip teasingly into his crack.

There’s no rush to it. They touch and they hold and they stroke because it’s _awesome,_ not because they’ve got anywhere they want it to go. Cas tumbles off him eventually, and grumbles until Dean rolls his eyes and rearranges the blankets to cover them both, because he’s weird like that, he really likes being under the covers. Maybe it feels like his trench coat to him, though that doesn’t explain the whole nakedness thing.

Dean sucks a hickey high into Cas’s neck, and happily follows it up with a string of them when the first one sticks. He wouldn’t say there are _good_ things about Cas’s grace flickering like a candle, but some days he almost seems to autoheal love bites: no sooner has Dean lifted up from leaving one than it’s already fading. And sometimes they stay for hours, days, just like a hickey should, turning from rosy pink to purple to brown before they start getting yellow and fuzzy at the edges. Dean studies one, possessively, from too close. Fuck, _yeah_.

Dean likes morning sex as much as the next guy, but his ass is still a little sore from last night. Besides, Cas is already starting to get dozy again, his eyes contented little slits, just half-open as Dean strokes a finger up and down the strong midline of his belly. This is just touching to touch, anyway—‘cause they’re both here, and they’re both _alive_ , and for them, with everything that’s happened to them, that is a fucking accomplishment, okay?

They won. They got each other in the bargain. So what if Dean’s knee can’t always hold him for the full day anymore, and Cas’s back is heavy with scars from where he tore his wings off getting out of the Empty? They’ve got _this_.

They should probably get out of bed sometime soon, though, before someone comes looking for them. The ladies got word of a shifter nest that they were going to clear out—Donna and them don’t need their help for that, but they generally all stick close in a fucking terrifying little hunter pack after what happened before, and Claire sent word of something hinky going on by Yellowstone that might be fucking _werebears_. And last night, Sam and Kevin had their heads bent over about something to do with possessed computers over by Palo Alto.

(If Dean gets a vote on which they go and tackle, he’s voting for werebears. Anything to do with computers still sort of freaks him out.)

“So what’s on the menu for today?” Dean asks, lazily thumbing at the delicate little treasure trail, almost invisible unless he’s looking right at it, that threads down from Cas’s bellybutton before fanning out into his curly pubes. He follows it back up then veers off-course, angling along the curve of a lean rib. His fingers fit _just right_ along their hollows, strips of Enochian peeking dark between them.

Cas blinks at him hopefully, then lifts the edge of the blanket to peer under it at himself. Then back at Dean. “Me?” he asks.

Dean swallows a laugh.

It’d probably be _the_ most awkward invitation to a blowjob that Dean’s ever seen in his whole fucking life… except it’s not. Because it’s Cas. Because Angel of the Lord Castiel has barely gotten the hang of innuendo _sometimes_ , and he’s probably never going to understand seduction past the kind of invitations that make Sam, Eileen, Kevin, and even _Jack_ vacate the room in a hurry. Not even _Dean_ thinks “I would like to debauch you now” or “can we engage in fellatio? I like that,” is sexy.

(Except when he does.)

Still, though, for Cas, that ain’t a half bad effort at all.

“Oh, fine, okay,” Dean chuckles, wiggling his way downwards and dropping kisses as he goes. “Geez, give a mouse a cookie. But after this I gotta get up and pee and shower.”

The little wrinkle between Cas’s eyebrows is out in full force by the time Dean’s made his way down to his hipbone, pressing teasing bites along the fucking _lovely_ curve of it. “I don’t know what mice or cookies you’re referring to—"

Dean snorts and the rest of Cas’s question sputters out as Dean reaches his target and peels the blankets off Cas. Cas wants a blowjob, Dean is oh-so-happy to provide, but he is _not_ doing it in a weird little blanket cocoon.

Cas not more than half-hard, neither of them are, and that’s fine—that’s just fine. That’s its own fun, too. Dean tastes him down slow and soft, just little motions of his lips and the tip of his tongue, because Cas is _really_ sensitive when he’s not all the way hard yet. Dean can get all of him into his mouth like this, easy, and the just-right weight of it isn’t even much of a stretch yet. He tastes of skin and sweat, and he smells anything but celestial down here—musky, heavy, _guy_. Dean’s mouth waters.

Giving a blowjob is weird. Dean’s probably going to always think that.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it, though.

It being comfortable and easy with Cas’s cock just resting on his tongue doesn’t last long, though it never does—the pull of pressure in his jaw and the prod against the back of his mouth as Cas stiffens up makes Dean’s throat flutter, because he’s not _quite_ there yet. He’ll get there eventually—no _way_ he’s letting a goddamned angel show him up in that, hell no, Dean _is_ gonna figure out this deep throating thing—but not this morning.

He pulls off and licks Cas careful, lollipops and ice cream cones, all the way up and down with a little swirling flick at the top. It’s no time at all before Cas’s hand tucks against his scalp—not pulling, just running fingers through over and over, like he’s grooming Dean’s sleep-ruffled hair. For all Dean knows, he is. Dean runs the wet seam of his lips up and down the side, base to tip, a dirty little slip and slide. Dean feels Cas’s cock thicken up that last little bit right there, right against his mouth, and chances a slow, sucking kiss against the underside. The first of Cas’s low moans tremors through the room.

Dean didn’t think, even in his filthiest imaginings, that Cas would sound like this in bed—loud, eager, easy with it. He doesn’t give a fuck who hears him enjoying himself. Though maybe Dean should have known. It’s not like Cas has ever once held back on anything he ever wanted to say or do—

_Didn’t he?_

—but that thought doesn’t belong here, with Cas tilting his hips up impatiently towards where Dean’s lips have gone still, just resting warmly on his tip as he thinks. He complains “ _Dean_ ,” because Cas has got _no_ manners whatsoever in bed. Dean’s not even gonna lie and pretend that’s not really hot.

Still, it’s not like Dean wants Cas to keep up with the bad habits. Even if he _is_ cute when he’s so eager. Dean raises his head the rest of the way. “Hey,” he retorts, mildly, and gives the cock in his hand a squeeze.

“I’m sorry,” Cas answers, immediately, and his hips lower again. He bites down on his lower lip the way he always does when he’s looking for control—it’s something he only does in bed, that little nip between his teeth, so at least _someone’s_ cutting Dean’s sanity a break. They haven’t christened any of the public surfaces in the bunker _yet,_ especially with five people still living here now that Sammy's little hunter corps has moved out again, but Dean has the terrible feeling it’s only a matter of time. “It feels so good when you do that.”

Dean’s not going to be the one that tells Cas that flattery in bed probably _will_ get him whatever he wants.

He wraps a hand around the base of Cas’s cock, enjoying the fit of him in his palm before he goes to town, just licks all over him, a little sloppy and a little wet, with a tiny bite right at the base of him because it makes Cas squeak. His lips push Cas’s foreskin down his length—yeah, figuring how to deal with _that_ was an experiment in ‘what the fuck;’ Dean wasn’t quite desperate enough to go on Google, but he was getting close—until he can tuck the softness of it into the ring of his fingers and just suck back and forth at the head. He’d play with it a little, normally, but maybe another time.

Cas _is_ just as sensitive as someone who hasn’t gotten to use much of his cock before ought to be, and it’s a goddamned gift watching him wriggle and rock. He’s even more sensitive on days his grace is low, like today—his face going red all the way down to his neck and choked, harsh noises echoing through his lips before he muffles them into the side of his wrist. A shaky little “ _Dean_ ,” arcs up into a higher register when Dean pulls off him with a noisy pop of suction and turns the tip of his tongue to tracing that little angled join where the head of him meets the shaft.

Dean’s never found dicks all that hot, he’s not gonna lie. But this, this act? The way skin slips against his lips in an easy glide? Going down in strokes on Cas with his jaw aching from the stretch, tongue moving in a slow stripe up the thick ridge along his underside because that makes him yowl? Feeling him come apart until Dean has to put one hand on his stomach to keep him from pushing too hard against Dean’s mouth?

Yeah, this is fucking _awesome._

Dean pulls off when the taste of salt starts getting thick in his mouth, and three long strokes of his hand later Cas is crying out and letting go—and there’s no other word for it, the abandon in it as his body arcs off the bed, so damned _beautiful_ as he stripes his belly with streaks of come, runnels of it dripping down Dean’s hand. Dean lets him shake to pieces, stroking him through it slow and coaxing and wet-fingered because Cas likes it drawn out like that. Dean knows he’s grinning like he just went out on a hunt and came back to fresh pie when he turns his face to drop kisses down Cas’s hipbone again, the hand that’s in his hair all the way slack, now.

Cas shifts and pushes to sit up a little, under him, still panting—and hey, that’s a surprise, normally he stays kind of boneless for a little while, no matter _what_ anyone says about them getting out of bed. Dean sprawls out on him with his face pressing into a clean spot on Cas’s belly and thinks about maybe getting himself off, too—he’s all the way hard, it wouldn’t take much. He wasn’t planning on it, but what the hell, why not. A few strokes, get Cas’s thighs all wet since they’re already both going to have to shower anyway… 

It'd be nice, but Dean doesn’t need it. This was for Cas, anyway, and Dean’s satisfied. He looks up to meet Cas’s eyes, grinning smugly. The hand in his hair slides down the side of his face, tracing his cheekbone and his jaw as it goes down.

Cas rests his hand on Dean’s shoulder—on his left shoulder, always the left. He has a smile on his face, and it’s not sleepy and satisfied. There’s something _wrong_ about it, something strange and beautiful and full of aching tears, lips blooded, face pink with strain. “I love you,” he says.

Dean stares, and he doesn’t understand why Cas is looking at him like that. Like it hurts so good to say it. Like they didn’t just wake up together in the same bed. Like he doesn’t know how Dean feels, how Dean’s felt for years. “Yeah, sunshine, of course,” he answers, confused. There’s still salt on his tongue, and it’s more bitter than he’s used to. “I love—”

Dean wakes up, alone, breathless, with blood stinging and sour in his mouth from where he bit the side of his tongue, and words he’s never said scorching his lips.

The air grates in his throat as Dean struggles for it, the crash of reality tumbling him the way it always does when he dreams like that. And he always does, that’s exactly how it always ends. Words on Dean’s lips that don’t make it through, Cas’s ‘I love you,’ joyful and hopeless.

He doesn’t have those dreams every day. But he doesn’t know if they’re better or worse than the screaming nightmares.

Dean curls up on his side and aches for breath, pulls the life of it into him with a hand pressed to his chest, his cheek in a pillow. He wants to throw himself out of bed—he wants to lie in it and close his eyes and sink back into the memory foam and the fake, happy dreams of waking up beside Cas with those blue eyes watching him.

It’s only been a year and he’s not even sure he can remember their exact color anymore, the way they change with the light, with whatever Cas felt— _feels,_ feels. Just a fucking _year_ , how could Dean possibly have started to forget already, with all the time they spent staring at each other? Where the fuck does his brain get off with letting him imagine the taste of Cas’s skin, his cock, his _mouth_ , the way he kisses first thing in the morning, and he can’t even hang on to the color of his goddamned _eyes?_

Probably because the last time he saw them, they were bluer than they’ve ever been, framed in red and tears and a smile that ripped Dean apart. He still hasn’t put himself back together—not all the way. But he’s trying.

Dean pulls himself, slowly, out of a bed with mattress foam that’s never had anyone but him in it. He stretches his knee and straps on the knee brace, then pulls on his jeans, catching his toe on the fray at the bottom of them before he yanks and the thread breaks. His undershirt and his flannel slip on on autopilot. He’s not sure what color his flannel is today, but it doesn’t really matter anyway, and he’s at least sort of sure it’s clean. His socks are plain black. So are his boxers. He has others, but they’re somewhere in the bottom of his dresser. What little playfulness he might have had left to him feels like it was stripped away weeks, months, a year ago.

There’s a dark green hunting jacket hanging on the back of his door. The blood on the shoulder has dried thick, flaking brown; it’s why he doesn’t wear it. There are some stains that’ll never come out, that’s true, but Dean can’t take the risk that this one will. He touches the middle of the bloody palm-print with his fingertips, and closes his eyes.

“Hey, Cas,” he says, and the sound of his own voice is sleep-hoarse. Or maybe that’s not it; maybe it’s that Dean hasn’t talked to anyone but Cas in days, this time around. He knows he doesn’t have to say anything aloud, but here, he always does—he always has. “Hey, buddy.”

 _Intent,_ Cas told him, once. But talking to him makes it real the way thoughts don’t.

Or, at least, they didn’t for eleven damned years.

“ _The one thing that I want… is something I know I can’t have.”_

Cas wasn’t wrong. That’s the most fucked-up thing about it all.

But he wasn’t right, either.

“I’m alive, and I’m safe,” Dean begins, the way he always does, though there might’ve been a point not that long ago when the first part of that wasn’t exactly true. “We’re all safe today, and we're good. Donna and Jody and the girls are on their way. It won’t be too long, now. You just… you rest up, okay? You get up your strength, and get ready to kick some ass.” He smiles, and feels the unfamiliar strain of it on his cheeks. “How much hell you giving it? Fuck, maybe you’ll annoy it so much it’ll boot you back out again before we’ve even got time to come get you.”

He doesn’t say “I love you.” Not here, not like this. It’d be cheating.

But there’s always a ‘please’ that always wants to spill out of him, inside, at the end—every time he does this. _Please_ , he wants to say. _Please,_ he wants to beg. And this, Dean bites down, swallows, bitter. This, he doesn’t dare say aloud. It never passes his lips. Every time Dean’s begged and pleaded with the world, it hasn’t come through.

Every time they’ve gotten something back from the universe, it’s because they’ve reached out and _taken_ it.

Eileen and Sam both look at him when he comes out into the kitchen. Eileen is the first one that looks away and goes back to what she was doing, because clearly Sam still only dates girls who are smarter than him. On another day, another time, another Dean, he might have even made a joke about stealing her from Sam.

“Bacon?” Eileen says, instead, fussing with a pan and lifting up something out of it that should smell like something Dean wants, crisp and golden-brown in a pair of metal tongs, still hissing with oil. It’s real meat, not Sam’s veggie shit. There are sandwich fixings by the side, bacon already stacked on some of the slices and ready for lettuce and tomato, another pile of sandwiches already made and wrapped beside them. The cooler’s standing open by the back. Water bottles and Gatorade peek out of it. Dean doesn’t drink anymore, not after the third time he ended up in the hospital, and Jack doesn’t bother, normally.

Dean almost says ‘no.’ But he nods and takes a piece, because he can’t stand the way Sam’s still looking at him, even a year later—like he understands.

(He does. They both realized it when Sam said, shattered, “I lost Eileen,” and Dean spat back, “I lost Cas.” Sam was hugging him before Dean realized just how fucking _real_ that was.)

Sam didn’t tell him that it was any different.

That was when Dean figured out Sam already _knew_ it wasn’t. Even if Dean himself didn’t know—not until Cas called him ‘loving’ and Dean’s brain screamed “ _lie_ ,” and Cas told him he loved him and Dean’s whole being howled, _“you can’t_.”

And if he and Sam both kept each other from losing their minds as the world burned around them, that’s just the way things are. Then they were too busy lighting the world right back up and getting their people back again to hug it out any more than that.

That’s just the Winchester way. The family business.

But the world’s not burning anymore.

It's good bacon. It’s really good—savory and smoky, yeah, of course, but it crunches between his teeth. Sam always makes it soggy. It’s _definitely_ not the low sodium shit. Dean points the leftover half of the strip at Eileen, but he’s looking at his brother. “You’re keeping her, right?” he signs, because most days, the words with his hands still come much easier than others.

“Yes, that was the plan,” Sam agrees, with a soft snort, but at least he’s not looking at Dean like he’s about to ask him if he’s okay anymore. The answer to _that_ has been the same for the last fucking year. “The baby might have something to say about it otherwise.”

Eileen snorts, and puts one hand on the round shelf of her belly, raising the other one to sign. “The _baby_ would have a problem with it?” she asks, and even Dean recognizes that the way she’s holding her wrist is dangerous.

Jack looks up from his eggs, blinking. “But babies don’t talk when they’re new!” he says. “Well. Unless they’re me.”

That cracks a smile onto Dean’s face, and he pats Jack on the shoulder as he passes him by. Way to defuse the situation, kid. He doesn’t say it out loud, but from the way Jack smiles back at him, even with only a bit left of his angel powers he probably hears it.

Dean sits down at the table in front of the food, because he knows that today, of all days, he should eat. He’s lost more weight than he knows he can afford to, and his cheekbones are an accusation in the mirror, but they can just join the club. No-one tries to get Dean to join the conversation anymore as they all sit down and eat together; he’s grateful, even though it took something like four fucking _months_ for them to learn that. Kevin’s not here. The kid’s a night owl.

But the eggs are really damned delicious—Jack probably made them, he does this thing where he puts a pat of butter on top and just stands at the stove and stirs them on this really low heat _forever,_ scooping the melted butter onto the top over and over. Dean sort of taught him to do that, but Jack’s got patience with it that he never had. There are tiny sprinkles of green on top of them, not enough to be offensive. Chives, probably. Dean flashes their kid a thumbs up and takes a second helping.

Jack grins at him. “Stevie called to report about a hunt she and Charlie are going on in Waukegan, and it made me want slow-eggs,” he tells Dean. “I put extra butter in them, just for you!”

Sam grunts something about cholesterol. Everyone ignores him. Especially since he’s eating the eggs, too. Even if he _is_ wrapping them in lettuce rather than toast, what the fuck. Jack, instead of telling them about the chemical structure of cholesterol, says something thoughtful and completely out of the blue about the baby books he and Sam have been reading together, and Eileen laughs.

Dean smiles. He’s learning.

Just as Sam’s starting to make noises about yoghurt with cut fruit—oh _hell_ no, Dean’s not ruining his bacon and eggs and toast breakfast with that shit—Sam’s phone goes off in his pocket.

Most people know better than to call Dean’s phone now, too.

“They’re about three hours away,” Sam reports, hanging up after a brief murmur of chat. He starts clearing the plates. Dean stands up to help him. “They’re fully supplied up, don’t need anything from here. Should we just meet them in the field?”

Wait, what? _We?_ Dean scowls at Sam, clutching a plate in his hands, and takes a closer look. That’s not just flannel and jeans, that’s _hunt_ flannel and jeans, boots laced on Sam’s feet. There’s a duffel bag peeking at by the entryway next to Jack’s backpack.

Oh, no way. Sonofabitch. They’ve had this talk. Or mostly had this talk.

Sam crosses his arms and arches an eyebrow. Dean thinks that expression should come with a soundtrack and a wind fan to blow Sam’s goddamned hair around his shoulders. Dean’s big-ass baby brother doesn’t say about a dozen things that he clearly wants to say, probably because he doesn’t want Dean to fucking lose his shit, lose his mind, or both.

Dean opens his mouth. Then he raises his free hand. Then he sighs and decides not to waste any more energy at it. He turns and cuts a long look at Eileen. _One_ of them has to have sense.

“I could be ready to pop _tomorrow,_ ” Eileen tells him, aloud, both hands on her hips for emphasis, which makes her belly look _fucking terrifyingly_ huge, “and I would still tell him to go with you, Dean.” She grins. “Besides, we’ll be fine. Kevin’s more useful than any of the rest of you lot.”

Dean snorts, softly. Not that ‘Agent Solo’ _isn’t_ a badass—Kev is. Still, fuck, it’s never going to stop being weird that the kid jumped back out of the Rapture the same age he was going into Death, so he and Jack are like… the same weird not-quite-teen age, now, sort of. And due to Kevin’s stint in the Veil, in Death, in Hell, as a fucking _ghost_ before they wrenched him back out of the Veil along with everyone else Chuck stuffed in there because he couldn’t send them to Heaven _or_ Hell, he’s sort of got the same weird eternally old, eternally young thing going on that Jack does, sometimes. Except even more so.

But on the scale of weird in their lives, that one’s like gummy worms versus Sandworms.

Sam blurts out, “But Kevin’s still _asleep_ ,” then shuts his trap like he realizes he’s making Dean’s argument for him.

Eileen snorts. “But he’s asleep in the _library_ , because he was doing research,” she points out, then gestures at where Sam looks like he’s going for the last of the eggs rather than doing that yoghurt thing he was talking about. “Don’t eat all the eggs, he’ll probably be up soon.”

Shit, no-one has any sense around here.

Including Dean, so welcome to the dysfunctional family.

But he has to try, because if Sam goes down on this, it doesn’t matter if Dean dies or gets himself stuck permanently in Heaven or Hell or Oblivion or the Empty. Dean’s never, _ever_ fucking gonna forgive himself—even less than he already can. He raises his hands, and in ASL punctuated by the nastiest glare that Dean’s pointed at anyone in a year, he tells his little brother, “You’re going to be a _dad,_ bitch, and even I know this plan isn’t safe.”

Because it’s true. It’ll always be true. Portals and summoning and blood, oh my. Sunspots making the walls of the world thinner than they’ve been in a decade; a little cabin in northern Illinois that’s so heavy with holy that gold dust beads up on the mantles rather than dustbunnies.

The very last bits of Jack’s grace are going to hold the portal open, not knowing if draining the last of it might just kill him again. Dean’s going to throw himself into the eternal night to bring back an angel who put himself there very fucking intentionally, not knowing if Cas is even sane still, or if Cas will even come with him—he remembers Purgatory, _fuck_. Donna and Jody and the girls are going to hold the line against whatever might come through behind him while they’ve got the world torn open yet again.

It might go just the way it did when he and Sam and Jack split the universe to snatch everyone back that Chuck shoved into the Void: Dean’s knee mostly permanently out of commission, now, Jack a shadow of everything that he used to be, Sam a mass of scars down his chest and side that will probably never heal all the way.

But it’ll probably be much worse.

What the fuck else is new?

Dean already tried to tell Jody to close it and leave him there if they can’t hold.

Jody punched him.

“Of course it’s not _safe_. We’re going to go do something crazy and probably a little suicidal,” Jack says, firmly, with that painfully true, achingly sweet certainty that came straight from one of his three dads. It’s from neither of the two standing here toe to toe and glaring at each other. “We’re going to go get _Cas_. And we’ll bring him home.”

It's Jack who says it aloud. It has to be, because no-one else has said Cas’s name around Dean in probably six months now.

Dean didn’t know how much he missed hearing it. How it catches him up in the chest. How it makes Cas _real_ again, for just a second.

How it makes this feel possible.

He and Sam break their stare-off at the same time.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, with a little smile that tilts up and almost makes it into his eyes. He blinks away tears. Dean realizes, like a slap across his fool face, that Sam missed hearing Cas's name said aloud, too. Probably missed saying it. “Yeah, I think it’s a great plan.”

Jack looks up, and the hope in his eyes glitters gold, radiant, and fierce. There’s no crackle of light to it. There doesn’t need to be. “It’ll be his birthday, you know. Since he’s never had one.” The way he tips his head is curious and so familiar it’s a heart attack, a wake-up shake out of a nightmare, a reminder—Cas is gone, but Jack is here, still here. Still fighting. Jack hasn’t learned how to lose faith yet. “I wonder if he likes birthday cake? Or would he prefer birthday pie?”

That chokes a little laugh out of Dean, and it burns coming up. “Good question,” Dean says, hoarsely, aloud. Sam startles. “Let’s go ask him.”

Pie versus cake; a birthday party, fuck. It’s a small dream. It’s such a fucking tiny little dream in such a huge, gaping wound, like the tear in the air where the Empty bubbled and sang, like the silent moment of shocked space where Dean could’ve—he should’ve—

But he didn’t, and Cas knew that he wouldn’t.

Cas never thought he could have the big dreams. Dean can’t even blame him for that. They, as the Winchesters, were the ones that taught him that—through one Apocalypse after another, with every death upon death, with the friends who fell to either side of them. With Dean never able to say what he could, what he meant—not to anyone, but most of all, not to Cas.

But if Dean can give him this little dream—if _they_ can give him this little one—then maybe they can _all_ dream the big ones again.

“We got work to do,” Dean says, and strides out to the Impala.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It."
> 
> _I said I wouldn't  
>  dammit: No tears.  
> I'm stone. I'm flesh.  
> My clouded reflection eyes me  
> like a bird of prey, the profile of night  
> slanted against morning. I turn  
> this way—the stone lets me go._
> 
> I don't know what's going to happen in the next two episodes, friends, but I hope you're all taking care of your hearts. I don't think in any way this is how the series is going to end... but I had to put my little hopes out there.
> 
> If you're needing emotional support the next few days/weeks/hours, we're all here biting our nails in the [Profound Bond Discord Server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond)\--come join us!


End file.
